Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
After Delays, Florida Releases New Covid Database
Florida Today: What's New In Florida Department Of Health COVID Reports After The Lawsuit? What's Missing?
After settling a public records lawsuit for COVID data, the Florida Department of Health has launched a new COVID database with years worth of data. What information has been added? Is anything missing? Here's a look at the new data. (Bridges, 11/27)
Tallahassee Democrat: Florida COVID Numbers: How The State Has Changed Reports Over The Years
In October 2023, the Florida Department of Health changed how it reports COVID cases & deaths. Again. Here's how they've changed during the pandemic. (Bridges, 11/27)
Also —
Los Angeles Times: California Vs. Florida: Surprising Which Handled COVID Better
Amid controversies over stay-at-home and masking orders, a lasting difference between Govs. Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis' approach may end up being rhetoric on vaccine safety. (Lin II, Money and Greene, 11/27)
Los Angeles Times: San Francisco's COVID Death Rate Among Lowest In Nation
The San Francisco Bay Area fared better during the COVID-19 pandemic than many other largely populated areas, with a cumulative COVID-19 death rate among the lowest of the nation’s most populous counties, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis. Of the nation’s 88 counties with a population greater than 750,000 people, San Francisco and neighboring Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties had COVID death rates among the lowest in the country. (Lin II, Money and Greene, 11/27)
More on the spread of covid —
The Wall Street Journal: Why You Are More Likely To Get Sick This Winter, In Charts
Get ready for more sickness. Covid-19 is settling in as a wintertime fixture, and infections are expected to rise again as the weather cools and holiday gatherings pile up. The virus is on a collision course with the seasonal scourges of flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which are circulating again after the pandemic disrupted their spread. (Abbott and Kamp, 11/25)
Euronews: 'It’s Not Gone. It’s Changing. It’s Killing': The COVID Variants The WHO Is Watching Closely
While the height of the pandemic may be over, the virus that causes COVID-19 continues to mutate with multiple variants circulating in every country. Yet despite this, testing and surveillance have decreased, with experts urging people to keep taking the threat of this disease seriously. "The world has moved on from COVID, and in many respects, that's good because people are able to stay protected and keep themselves safe, but this virus has not gone anywhere. It's circulating. It's changing, it's killing, and we have to keep up," Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 technical lead at the World Health Organization (WHO), told Euronews Next. (Chdwick, 11/24)
CIDRAP: Half Of COVID Survivors Still Had Symptoms At 3 Years, More Reinfections Amid Omicron
Three years after COVID-19 infection, 54% of adults in a Chinese cohort still had at least one symptom, most of them mild to moderate in severity, with higher rates of reinfection and pneumonia after the emergence of the Omicron variant, shows a study published yesterday in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. (Van Beusekom, 11/22)
CIDRAP: MRI Study Spotlights Impact Of Long COVID On The Brain
A new study comparing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images of patients with long COVID, fully recovered COVID-19 survivors, and healthy controls shows microstructural changes in different brain regions in the long-COVID patients. The findings will be presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. The research is the first to use diffusion microstructure imaging (DMI), a novel MRI technique, which looks at the movement of water molecules in tissues. DFI can detect smaller brain changes than traditional MRI. (Soucheray, 11/22)
CIDRAP: Kids Largely Left Out Of US Trials Of COVID-19 Treatments
Less than 10% of US interventional COVID-19 trials in the first 3 years of the pandemic included children, and only 1.6% enrolled them exclusively, despite this age-group accounting for 18% of infections, Harvard and Boston Children's Hospital researchers report today in JAMA Health Forum. The team identified all COVID-19 trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov from January 2020 to December 2022. They noted that children have been underrepresented in clinical research owing to ethical, logistical, and financial reasons. (Van Beusekom, 11/22)
